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Iron Chef-The Grinder (1st-2nd)

Now, for those of you that don't know what's been going on in the deck forum, I have been running a deck contest to select seven people that will represent Pokegym in a sort of national/world championship-esque tournament run by yours truly...the only difference from regular tournies?

No playing at ALL! Just deckbuilding...the ultimate test on not only your ability to make a quality list, but also to find usage for all of your cards, as well as a way to make it all unique and creative. Sadly, these seven people are not the first, but rather the last to join the hallowed ranks of invitees to Iron Chef's "Tournament of Champions." With my sixteen competitors chosen, these people will duel to decide the ultimate champion of deckbuilding!

However, you may be asking..."Who all is invited?" Well, in addition to these previously invited people:

The strategy is to use infinite fossils to stall out your opponent for the win. First get out Pidgeot RG. Use him to search out stuff. Then get out a Pidgeot S2, a Grumpig with 3 energy, and a couple fossils in play. Your first important turn should go like this:

Grumpig use Teleport Blast!
Grumpig does 40 damage and is sent to the Bench to switch with a Fossil. On the opponent's turn, they KO the fossil. You promote Grumpig active. Play Celebi ex from your hand, putting the newly KOed fossil back on top of your deck.

Grumpig use Teleport Blast! Grumpig does 40 damage and is sent to the Bench to switch with a Fossil. On the opponent's turn, they KO the fossil. You promote Pidgeot S2 active. You just drew a Fossil from your deck, so play that down. Use Pidgeot S2's power to shuffle Celebi ex back into the deck. Use Pidgeot RG to search it back out and play it to your bench, putting the newly KOed fossil back on top of your deck. Retreat Pidgeot S2 for Grumpig.

Grumpig use Teleport Blast! etc and all the turns are supposed to go like that. Just keep doing 40 damage while hiding behind infinite fossils until you win.

Dual Ball is there to search for basics you need, so you can even get like a Celebi ex so you don't have to keep using Pidgeot's power every turn.

There are 3 desert ruins, but actually they are infinite, cause you can keep recovering them with Celebi ex. If you're playing against a deck with ex's, you win the stadium war with desert ruins and get it to stick while you keep throwing up fossils, so then their ex's take 20 after each round and eventually get KOed for some prizes.

The Warp energys are there so you can switch a Pidgeot S2 with another Pidgeot S2 in the same turn, shuffling 2 celebi ex's into your deck in 1 turn.”

Deck (9/10): This is a very, very solid list, with only a couple things I’d do differently…even with this type of strategy, energy seems really low, so it seems like adding in at least one or two would help setup tremendously. If room is no issue, then perhaps finding a way to make Grumpig 3-3 would be nice, too. Other than that, it’s very good, and extremely solid.

Creativity (4/5): Fossils with Grumpig is kind of regular. Pidgeot and Celebi ex is pretty creative, but both combined is a very, very good idea. Nice!

Card Use (4/5): Well done, in terms of usage. Celebi, Grumpig, Pidgeots, etcetcetc…ALL have great use with the prompt of 12 Fossils. It could have been taken to the next level, in terms of other tech cards, but it’s just flat-out solid the way it is.

OVERALL: 17/20

~~~1st Place: Pidgeotto Trainer~~~

“Iron Chef Grinder Round 3
Entry: Ross C (Pidgeotto Trainer)
Ingredients: 4 Claw Fossil, 4 Root Fossil, 4 Mysterious Fossil
“Pidgeotto’s Fossil ThunderStorm”
Pokemon 31
4 Eevee cff ds
4 Jolteon ex
3 Pidgey
2 Pidgeotto
4 Pidgeot (2 RG, 2 P2)
2 Registeel ex em
4 Claw Fossil
4 Root Fossil
4 Mysterious Fossil
Trainers 21
4 PETM
2 Transceiver
2 Mentor
1 Scientist
2 Steven
2 Admin
4 Space Center (Since Lunasol would crush the strategy)
2 Rare Candy
2 Rock TM
Energy 8
3 Metal
1 Lightning
2 Holon’s Magnemite
2 Holon’s Magneton
I love this deck because it uses Pidgeotto. ;p
First of all, I hope you don’t mind me listing Fossils as Pokemon and Holon’s Pokemon as energy. In terms of strategy, this layout makes more sense for looking at the deck.
Anyways, I took a very creative approach to the 12 Fossil requirement. Jolteon ex does 10 to each pokemon upon evolving, hurting the opponent without needing to be active, perfect for Fossils. Since 12 Fossils will buy you so much time, you’re gonna get time to use Jolteon’s Evolutionary Thunder power several times. This will be possible thanks to Pop 2 Pidgeot, whose Beating Wings poke-power shuffles back in your Jolteon ex so you can play it again later and use its power again. Now if you send up Pidgeot Pop 2 every time a Fossil gets ko’d, and then retreat it for free, you’ll get a lot of shuffling back of Jolteon ex’s, and thus the use of its power several times. You use the RG’s Pidgeot’s Quick Search power to bring the Jolteon ex +Eevees back after Pop 2’s Pidgeot’s Beating Wings and hopefully be getting about 1 Jolteon ex power per turn. With 12 fossils, this will be more than enough to ko everything on your opponents side.
If for whatever reason, your a little short on total damage, you can spend some of your fossil time building up a Registeel ex or 2. After all the Jolteon’s, 1 20 to everywhere from Emerald Registeel ex should be enough, 2 maximum which is why there are 2 Registeel. You also have 2 Rock TMs so the most damage you should need is 80 everywhere. With 12 fossils to let you keep using Beating Wings/Evolutionary Thunder, and perhaps some 20s by Registeel ex to top it off, 80 should be no problem at all.

Pokemon
4-4 Jolteon ex
Obviously having a maximum is useful. Jolteon’s Evolutionary Thunder is going to be the main weapon of the deck.
3-2-2RG-2 Pop2 Pidgeot
The goal is to get 1 Pidgeot RG for setup and to get the Jolteon/Eevees you shuffle in, and 1 Pidgeot Pop 2 to shuffle the Jolteon’s back in the deck, the key combo to the deck. Since I’m trying to get 2 Pidgeot up, I have included 3 Pidgey 2 Pidgeotto (+2 Candy) and 2 of each Pidgeot, more than the typical 2-1-2 Pidgeot line designed to get 1 Pidgeot out.
2 Registeel ex
A cleaner for more bench damage if needed. It is an insurance policy if the fossils have run out before I can get too many Jolteon powers. Really, I doubt I will use these much but it’s a good insurance policy if needed. The time I would use these is probably when everything is at 60 damage, I do 20 everywhere once with Registeel and then I can Rock TM everything. I chose Registeel as being a basic and needing just 3 energy for doing 20 everywhere makes it the most deck space efficient deal 20 everywhere card. Yes, it is an ex but since nothing else will get ko’d for a prize, even if both Registeels fall, I should still win.
12 Fossils
Another important part of the deck. Without the 12 fossils to stall, you could never get enough Evolutionary Thunder’s off to win. With 12 Fossils as your buffer though, you have loads of time for many Evolutionary Thunder’s which will win the game for you while your opponent continues to attack for no prizes. This combo can only hope to work because of the 12 Fossils.

Trainers
4 PETM
2 Transceiver
2 Mentor
1 Scientist
2 Steven
2 Admin
A standard draw engine imo. You want a Mentor fairly early to get 3 Eevees ready to evolve and your 2 Pidgey for the 2 different Pidgeots. PETM because you need to search for Jolteon ex. Admin is always a good card for different situations. Steven and Scientist are standard draw. 13 draw/search cards should be more than enough; unlike most decks, you can afford to stall quite a while without being behind on prizes thanks to your 12 Fossils.
4 Space Center
The deck needs 4 Gyms. Battle Frontier and Desert Ruins hurt it. Since Lunasol stopping Pidgeot’s Beating Wings could be crushing to the deck, stopping them with Space Center is important. The main thing though is just stopping Frontier/Ruins, 4 gyms will be enough for that so that objective is accomplished.
2 Rare Candy
Only used for Pidgeot really. Because of that, and the fact you really don’t have to be exceptionally fast with your 12 Fossils to stall, I only played 2 Rare Candy. 3 would be a bit too much just for Pidgeot in a deck that can afford to be a little slow.
2 Rock TM
This cuts how much damage you need to do to all of your opponent’s pokemon down by a good 40+ damage usually, a huge benefit to the deck. 2 is good here in case 1 is prized. 2 is also good in case they try to rebuild after losing a lot of pokemon. A possible strategy against this deck would be to try to hold a bunch of basics in your hand until I’ve used Rock TM to ko a bunch of stuff. Then they try to play basics, candy to their evos and start a counter attack. I’ve seen this type of strategy agains Pow Block type decks though its usually a desperation attempt. With a 2nd Rock TM, all those candied pokemon and their last ditch attack will fall.
Energy 8
3 Metal
1 Lightning
2 Holon’s Magnemite
2 Holon’s Magneton
Your initial reaction may be that I’m crazy for only having 8 energy. Really, this could be too MUCH energy. If you win the game with just Jolteons (very possible) you don’t even need an energy the entire game! If you just need Jolteons and 1 Rock TM to win (Very likely) you need just 1 energy the entire game! I went all the way up to 8 for those games I might need to use a Registeel ex or 2 to clean up. There’s more than enough energy to power both up here, Holon’s Magneton works great to conserve overall energy cards. The most I should ever need is Registeel with Magneton/Metal, Registeel with Magneton/Metal and 1 more energy for Rock TM. I then have a few more energy just in case of stuff being prized. It looks really thin for energy but really I need THIS MUCH for only the most extreme situations. I guarantee I will win many games on 1 energy the whole game with this deck.
2 Holon’s Magnemite because it can be searched out by Mentor, and because of Holon’s Magneton, there isn’t any energy type I really need too badly. 3 Metal since Registeel is what I’m most likely to attack with. I don’t need 4 because of the Holon’s Magnetons. 1 Lightning for Jolteon in the random game it needs to attack and Holon’s Magneton is not an option. H Magnemite over Voltorb since I have more Metal than Lightning, and then Magneton over Electrode since I could actually play Magneton if I need to.

This deck completely uses the 12 Fossils, it could not work otherwise. It also has a combo I don’t think I have seen used before with the fossils, unlike more popular Politoed-type decks. This less common strategy is just as good or even better though. This Pidgeot-based deck is taking me to the Tournament of Champions.
Thanks for reading.”

Deck (9/10): I’m not too fond of less than four rare candy in a heavy Pidgeot deck such as this one, and Holon’s Magnemite can prove to be a poor starter (hypothetically if you don’t draw into fossils, which can happen), but the rest of your list is very solid, and you give a fair reason for why energy should be so “low.”
Overall, excellent work!

Creativity (4/5): First and last reactions of this deck are, “I really like the idea of hiding behind fossils while pinging!” Granted, there are many things that could get in your way, but this is a nice, unique take on the tried-and-true Spinning Tail decks.

Card Use (5/5): Card Use is excellent; you, like most of the other competitors, abuse the fossils as a safety net, but in possibly the best way of all. Extremely good work.

Doesen't space center shut off the fossils body's? wouldn't Mt. Moon work better? Good Job to both of you!(I liked Venusaurs better, it might actually work!) GJ Pidgeotto trainer, you did make a very good decklist!

No cause celebi ex would keep doing 30 to gatr, while gatr cant do anything to it cause of Psychic Shield. Plus gatr would be taking 10 a turn from desert ruins. The only thing gatr could do is 10 to my bench.

I would've thought 2 Rare Candy instead of 4 would have really brought Ross down, as you say LunaRock is a very threatening mechanic to the format and to the deck, and thus Space Center can fit in this deck, but 4 Rare Candy to me just seems ilogical NOT to play when using Pidgeot, specially if Pidgeot RG is your main searcher, but meh,